10. From this we infer that the idea of being is not intuitive to us, and that by its very indeterminateness it excludes all that a determinate object can offer to our perception.
[CHAPTER III.]
SUBSTANTIVE AND COPULATIVE BEING.
11. For the more thorough understanding of this matter, it will be well to distinguish between the absolute and relative ideas of being; that is between what is expressed by the word being, when it designates reality, simple existence, and when it marks the union of a predicate and its subject. In the two following propositions we see very closely the different meaning of the word is; Peter is; Peter is good. In the former the word is designates the reality of Peter, or his existence; in the latter, it expresses the union of the predicate good with the subject Peter. In the former the verb to be is substantive, in the latter it is copulative. The substantive simply expresses the existence; the copulative a determination, a mode of existing. The desk is, signifies the simple existence of the desk; the desk is high, expresses a mode of being, height.
12. Purely substantive being, is nowhere met with, except in the following proposition: being is, or what is is; in all other propositions there is involved, even in the subject itself, some predicate which determines the mode. When we say, the desk is, notwithstanding that the direct predicate of the proposition is the word is, there yet enters into the subject desk a determination of the being of which we speak, and that is of a being which is a desk. We were, then, right in saying that the verb to be, in its purely substantive meaning, is met with in no other proposition than this: being is. This is perfectly identical, absolutely necessary and convertible, that is, the predicate may be observed of all subjects, and the subject of all predicates. Suppose we give the proposition a different form; being is existing; we can still say all being is existing, or the existing is being; that is, all that exists is being.
13. If it be objected that possible being does not exist, we answer that purely possible being is not, strictly speaking, being; but that it does exist, in the same mode in which it is, that is, in the possible order. As we shall, however, treat this question more fully hereafter, we now turn to the propositions in which being is copulative. The desk is, is equivalent to this, the desk is existing. It is true that every real desk is existing, but real is the same as existing; and thus it might, in one sense, be said that the proposition resembles this other: all being is. But here we detect a difference; it consists in this, that the idea of existence does not necessarily enter into that of desk, for we can conceive of a desk which does not exist, but we cannot conceive of a being as such without a being, that is, of a being which is not being. A very notable difference is every way perceptible between the two propositions; in the former, the subject may be affirmed of all predicates by saying, all that is existing is being; but it is evident that we cannot say all that is existing is desk.
14. The reason of this is that the proposition, being is, is absolutely identical; it is the expression of a pure conception reduced to the form of a proposition; and, consequently, the terms which serve as extremes may be taken indiscriminately the one for the other; being is, whatever is, is being; being is existing; every thing existing is being. But different orders of ideas are combined in all other propositions; and, although the common idea of being is applicable to all, as this idea is essentially indeterminate, it does not thence follow that one of the things to which the general idea corresponds is identical with the other, alike entering into the same general idea. Being belongs to every existing desk; but not, therefore, is every thing a desk.
15. Copulative being may be applied without the substantive; thus when we say that the ellipse is curvilinear, we abstract both the existence and non-existence of any one ellipse; and the proposition would be true although no ellipse at all were to exist. The reason is that the verb to be, when copulative, expresses the relation of two ideas.
16. This relation is of identity, but in such a way that more than the union of the two is needed before a predicate can be affirmed of a subject. The head is united to the man, but it cannot, therefore, be said, "man is his head;" the sensibility is united to the reason in the same man, but we cannot say, "sensibility is reason;" whiteness is in union with the wall, but we cannot say "the wall is whiteness."